Items Tagged With antidepressant

"It is alarming to see that there is still a fear regarding antidepressant use during pregnancy. We knew that some women were going to discontinue using their antidepressants during pregnancy but we didn't think it would be so prevalent and inappropriately used (amongst those who remain on it)," senior author Dr. Anick Berard told Reuters Health.

"The risks of untreated depression during pregnancy are significant," Berard, from the CHU Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal, said. "Given the safety of most antidepressants during pregnancy, a careful evaluation of the risk/benefit ratio should be done before deciding to discontinue their use. Although physicians and women think they are protecting their unborn child, they might be doing just the contrary."

It cannot be assumed that an antidepressant has lost its effectiveness if a patient relapses while continuing on the medication, because the medication may never have been effective in the first place, according to study findings reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

In the study, the majority of relapses occurred in patients who had never been true responders, Dr. Mark Zimmerman, director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital, told Reuters Health.

Some patients with major depressive disorder, similar to other medical disorders, respond to placebo, Zimmerman explained. In clinical practice, everyone is given an active drug, so it's not clear if a patient who responds has improve because of the drug or because of "nonspecific" effects, such as the placebo effect.